01100010 01101001 01101110 01100001 01110010 01111001

As I have mentioned before, my mind has a tendency to wonder. I don’t know why and it is simply uncontrollable. It goes all over the place and when I reach the end of the ride I have no idea how I got there. My mind could start on I’m thirsty and end on what is that moon shaped thing on fingernails called? (Lunula by the way).

This morning it happened again. I was in the shower and for some reason I ended up on binary. Weird, right? I happen to think so. I know I started by thinking about how strange it is that in Canada with weights and measures we use a combination of metric and imperial. For example when I go to the grocery thing are sold by the pound or a room is sized by square footage but we drive a certain amount of kilometers or a can of pop is 355 mL. Don’t ask me how I got there in the first place but there I was.

Anyways, somehow from there I ended up on that robots song by Flight of the Conchords. I love that song. It is completely ridiculous but totally awesome at the same time. At one point in the song they count 1 to 4 using “binary” and it has to be in quotes because it really isn’t. They say: 0000001, 0000011, 0000111, 0001111. It is completely incorrect and it drives me crazy every single time I hear it.

 

 

For those of you who don’t know, Binary is a counting system based on powers of 2 represented by the use of a 1 or a 0. If you know how to read it, it is a very simple system. Below I show an example for the number “42”.

 

 

 

 

 

 It is this code that computers are based on. Everything on a computer can be broken down into binary; numbers, letters, symbols, and colours all have a representing binary code.

So in the song they actually counted: 1, 3, 7, 15. If they were to do it correctly it would go: 0000001, 0000010, 0000011, 0000100. But That wouldn’t sound as good.

I was completely fixated on this notion for the morning. In fact I am so fixated on it that I am writing about it now. I know it has always bothered me but today for some reason it has just been sitting in my head drilling away at me.

I know, I know, I am totally geeking out. I mentioned this to Cory and Nel via email. Nel has yet to respond either because he is busy or he was so floored by my geekness. And here is what Cory had to say “Tracey just when I think you can’t possibly geek it up another notch you start with Binary!! Really!! GEEK table for 1!” Who feels the love? I do, I do.

01101001 01100110 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110101 01101110 01100100 01100101 01110010 01110011 01110100 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011

01010100 01110010 01100001